It’s easy to find people who are bright on the outside. The Enlightenment has been a go-to source for figures of towering intellect. What’s much harder to find are people who are bright on the inside. These are people who have had heart surgery of the highest order. The brightness they hold on the inside can then work its way to the outside.

When it comes to spiritual matters, what you see is seldom what you get. Appearances aren’t just deceiving; they can be damning. History is rife with examples of hypocrisy: those who claim to be full of light but who are, in fact, dark as dungeons. A recent example reminded me just how important it is to maintain that the inside is what matters most. Salvation is a matter of the heart, not a battle for the head. And I’ll explain why.
Enlightenment or Egoism?
I was recently reading Andrew Wilson’s excellent book Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. In his discussion of the Enlightenment and the figures who changed the world with their intellectual and scientific accomplishments, something dark drifted to the surface. The enlightened all-stars weren’t all that enlightened when it came to anthropology and a basic understanding of humanity as made in God’s image. David Hume, Voltaire, and Immanuel Kant were aggressively and barbarically racist (pp. 109–113). They referred to African Americans as having “no ingenuity,” as being a “low people,” being “barbarous,” and having “no art.” Voltaire even referred to them as a “different species.” And Kant went as far as to say “not a single one was ever found who presented anything great in art or science or any other praiseworthy quality.” Their comments are crass enough to make anyone today blush with embarrassment or churn with hatred. How could people so allegedly “enlightened” think such things? Their conduct “raises questions about how ‘enlightened’ the major Enlighteners actually were” (p. 110). There was as much vain egoism for these men as there was enlightenment. They may have had bright minds, but there was darkness in their hearts, as there is for every human.
Had Hume, Voltaire, and Kant lived in today’s world, they would have been canceled before you could snap your fingers. (Wilson notes how a University of Edinburgh building named after Hume was renamed during the George Floyd protests; similarly, a Parisian statue of Voltaire was removed in 2020.) And yet the Enlightenment, for the most part, is still viewed with respect and pride, as a watershed of human accomplishment. The Enlightenment has become a celebration of the head. But has it also become an ignorance of the heart? In gushing about the Enlightenment, are we guilty of staring only at the mind and turning a blind eye to the soul?
I think we are, and it’s not limited to the Enlightenment. We still do this today. We assume that the solution for every human evil is intellectual education, not spiritual operation (Ezek. 36:26). It’s the head that needs fixing, not the heart. In fact, suggesting that the latter is the real problem can even stir up animosity.
A Dead Heart, a Broken Head
I once remarked in an open forum that I believed a rejection of God is always, at base, a matter of the heart, not the head. The vehemence that met me because of that comment still stuns me. People lashed out in defense of their intellectual qualms with Christianity. And that lashing out actually proved my point. Why were people so angry? There were lots of reasons, I’m sure, but among them must have been the fact that I was assuming something deep inside them was the problem. And that problem couldn’t be fixed with a book or a coherent argument in favor of God’s existence. It went deeper than the head.
And while there is a close relationship throughout Scripture between the head and heart, between what we think and what we believe and worship, the emphasis for redemption begins with the heart, and then trickles up to the head (Ezek. 11:19; 36:26; Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10).
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Therefore, just as I’m fearfully and wonderfully black, if you’re white—you’re fearfully and wonderfully white. Your identity is shaped by your creator, not critical race theorists. A positive white identity is only an impossible goal if you believe (white) people are not made in the image of God. But since white people—like all people—are made in the image of God, all white people should have a positive identity.

Just as white supremacy made some black people ashamed of their skin colour, critical race theory has made some white people ashamed of their skin colour.
In her best-selling book, White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo said “a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy.”
The ramifications of that kind of racist rhetoric from authors, social media influencers, teachers, and imposter pastors cannot be understated. Critical race theory has altered many white people’s perceptions of themselves, especially young white people.
You’ve probably come across stories of children telling their parents they wish they weren’t white. You might not know, however, that critical race theory’s impact on young white people is significantly worse than that.
Young white people, especially young white women have been made to believe that though they can’t change their skin colour—they can change other parts of their body in order to achieve a positive identity.
White supremacy made some black people harm their bodies through skin bleaching. But worse, critical race theory is making some white people harm their bodies through transgenderism.
Many detransitioning white teenagers have admitted that one of the reasons why they once identified as transgender is because they didn’t think they could have a positive identity as white people.
For instance, a detransitioning woman named Helena Kerschner recently said, “I was just going through this period of like I don’t like how I’m treated as a cis person. I don’t want to be cis because cis means you’re uncool, and you’re privileged, and you’re an oppressor, and you’re bad. I don’t want to be bad. In that way I really incentivized to try to figure out a way to make my voice heard in these communities…Obviously I can’t change my race…so the only thing left was to start playing around with the gender stuff.”
Therefore, just as the civil rights movement used the phrase “black is beautiful” to affirm black beauty in the era of white supremacy, I’ll paraphrase the eternal words of our creator in this era of critical race theory and say: if you’re a white person, you’re fearfully and wonderfully white.
You’re wonderfully white because you’re wonderfully made by God. Your skin colour is just as beautifully painted by God as my black skin.
When King David said in Psalm 139 that he is fearfully and wonderfully made, he was speaking of every single part of his body, including his (probably) light brown skin—and he was also speaking of everyone with different shades of skin.
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An essay by Louise Perry at The Spectator, entitled, “Modernity is making you sterile.” Perry, a maverick feminist and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, argues that the so-called “progress narrative” cherished among the elites of the developed world, along with the technologies that have enabled it, is keeping us from having babies. Like a slow-acting poison, modernity and its values have eaten away at the fabric of society, though imperceptibly so to those focused only on the present.

In his 1929 book The Thing, G.K. Chesterton warns social reformers to be cautious about changing institutions, laws, or customs:  
[L]et us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or a gate [is] erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away.” 
Chesterton was illustrating the often-subtle importance of structures and ideas that moderns are so eager to deconstruct. Before setting longstanding traditions aside, we should first understand these things and understand why previous generations were committed to them. Otherwise, even well-meaning reforms can incur serious consequences, not all of which are immediately obvious, and which fall on future generations. 
Chesterton’s analogy came to mind while reading an essay by Louise Perry at The Spectator, entitled, “Modernity is making you sterile.” Perry, a maverick feminist and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, argues that the so-called “progress narrative” cherished among the elites of the developed world, along with the technologies that have enabled it, is keeping us from having babies. Like a slow-acting poison, modernity and its values have eaten away at the fabric of society, though imperceptibly so to those focused only on the present. This, she writes, is the real reason that most of the developed world is currently running out of people: 
[W]hat we are now discovering is that, at the population level, modernity selects systematically against itself.
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